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"The Court also finds troubling [Lawyer's] failure to identify or bring the non-existent case citations to the Court's attention before the hearing on the motion to compel arbitration. The Court should not be left as the last line of defense against citations to fictional cases in briefs filed with the court. While [Lawyer] did not create or rely on the fake citations, he also did not detect them. Instead, he admitted he did not review the cases cited by his opponent...."

Ad/Marketing Communication This legal article/report forms part of my ongoing legal commentary on the use of artificial intelligence within the justice system. It supports my work in teaching, lecturing, and writing about AI and the law and is published to…

"93. In further submissions, the Representative said 'The suggestion that citing a published authority amounts to providing false material is misconceived. A court decision is a matter of public record. Whether a case applies is a matter of legal argument and opinion, not misrepresentation. It is entirely proper for parties to put forward different interpretations for the Tribunal to consider. To characterise this as "false material" is both unfounded and inappropriate.' It is not clear who the representative is quoting as saying false material was used. The wording used by HMRC was 'inaccurate use of AI/inaccurate authorities'.

As I was catching up on recent international decisions in the developing field of AI and the law, I found myself drawn to two in particular, one from the United States and one from Australia. I initially considered writing about each decision separately. In the end, I felt that reading them together offered a more helpful way of exploring three issues that I have been reflecting on for some time and which I hope will also be of practical interest to readers navigating similar questions.

"I have come to think of AI law as two related, but not necessarily overlapping, things... These are distinct forms of legal work and there is no reason to assume that those practising in one will necessarily practise in the other, but each increasingly calls for lawyers who develop focused expertise rather than treating AI as a peripheral concern."

“The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience… The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics."

Oliver Wendell Holmes

"...I return to the issue raised by the father’s representatives about the mother’s erroneous citation of authority (see in particular paragraph 54 above). I absolve the mother of any intention to mislead the court. Litigants in person are in a difficult position putting forward legal arguments. It is entirely understandable that they should resort to artificial intelligence for help. Used properly and responsibly, artificial intelligence can be of assistance to litigants and lawyers when preparing cases. But it is not an authoritative or infallible body of legal knowledge. There are a growing number of reports of “hallucinations” infecting legal arguments through the citation of cases for propositions for which they are not authority and, in some instances, the citation of cases that do not exist at all...."

"AI offers opportunities to resolve complex rent and disrepair disputes far more quickly and economically than was possible in past times. We should embrace those opportunities and available new technologies in order to provide the access to justice that so many tenants and occupiers have long sought and have long found to have eluded them.”

“It would then appear that on 18/5/25, on father’s case …, or perhaps even earlier in 2025 …, he formed the view that the mother was having an affair. He had access to her ChatGPT account, which I confess was new to me. This was explained to me as effectively analogous to one person having remote access to another person’s internet search history…”

“In considering the Respondent’s grounds of appeal, the tribunal noted that the Respondent relied on a number of cases. However, on close scrutiny, the tribunal was unable to find some of the cases that were referenced. Further the tribunal found that in a number of the cases quoted, incorrect references were used and in many of the cases the tribunal did not recognise the case summary provided...The tribunal is aware of the growing use of artificial intelligence and it would appear that an AI tool was used to prepare the Respondent’s grounds of appeal. This has resulted in the tribunal’s resources being disproportionately engaged in order to consider the cases relied on by the Respondent.”